Saturday, 29 June 2019

The UK right wing press: news or propaganda? The Boris domestic story.

Some background for
non-UK readers. The contest for the next leader of the Conservative
party, and therefore our next Prime Minister, is now between two:
Boris Johnson and someone else. Johnson is the clear favourite to
win. Johnson has a pretty colourful love life, such that uncertainty
about how many children he has produced is a talking point.

Last week neighbours
of Johnson’s current girlfriend heard screaming, crashing and
shouting coming from her home very late at night. One particular
neighbour, Mr. Penn, knocked on the door but there was no response.
He then rang the police, who quickly came to the property. The police
were satisfied that all occupants were OK, they had no concerns and
left. One other neighbour described the earlier noise as so bad they
thought someone had been murdered.

That would have been
that, except that one of those neighbours, a Mr. Penn, contacted the Guardian about the story,
and had also switched on his phone inside the flat when the noises
started. The reason he gave
for contacting the Guardian was simply that the story was of public
interest. The Guardian rang the police and they initially said there
was no incident that night. When the Guardian rang back with further
details the police corroborated the story.

The story was of
course of public interest. It was on the front page of every
newspaper the next day, including the right wing press. So far, the
right wing press were acting as proper newspapers. It is what
happened next that tells a more interesting tale. Mr. Penn decided to
go public (the Guardian had kept his identity secret) because

“The unpleasant things being said about myself and my partner, and
some quite frankly bizarre and fictitious allegations, have been
upsetting for not only us, but also for family, friends and fellow
Camberwell neighbours, who are currently being harangued by the
media. I would ask that you leave private citizens alone and focus
instead on those who have chosen to run for power within the public
eye.The attempts from some areas of the press to instead focus their
stories on us, and in particular my wife, have been eye-opening, and
very alarming.”

Here is a headline from the Mail the day after the incident hit the
front pages that gives you a flavour of what he meant.

“Most curious of all is what the couple did – and why they did it
– after they were assured by police that there was nothing to worry
about, that no one was hurt, no crime had been committed and that
there was no cause for further action. At this point many in their
position might have slunk away, faintly embarrassed they had dropped
their neighbours (with whom they share a tiny communal landing) in it
with police.”

Other right wing newspapers joined in. The Times searched through
Mr.Penn and his wife’s twitter accounts to find ‘incriminating
evidence’ that they were Remainers, left wing, disliked Johnson and
so on. The Telegraph gave two pages over to comment of a similar
kind.

The hypocrisy of the follow up reporting had two aims. The first was
to distract attention away from the fact, which no one denies, that
Johnson had had a blazing row with his girlfriend that frightened
many neighbours and to instead focus attention on the messengers. The
implication of rather a lot of the reporting is that if you hear a
woman screaming next door best keep it to yourself. The hypocrisy is
that every newspaper had run the story as a front page lead the day
before, so Mr. Penn had been absolutely correct that the story was of
public interest.

The second aim is to ensure that any other member of the public that
might have potentially important information about a Tory politician
that was in the public interest keeps it to themselves. They will
keep it to themselves because they know that if they reveal it they
will have the full might of the Tory press trying to destroy their
character in the days after the information was revealed.

Adam Ramsey describes
this as anti-journalism, but I think that does not fully describe
what is going on. If it had been a Labour politician of any rank
these same journalists would have gone to any length
to find the dirt on the politician, and not reward their sources by
investigating them as well. What these newspapers are doing is
propaganda: providing information,
especially of a biased or misleading nature, designed to promote a
political cause or point of view.

Why have these papers not yet descended to the level of Fox News in
pretending bad things (for Trump) did not happen? These papers know
that most of their readers will get their news from one of the
broadcasters as well. If they are not reporting what is a top story
for these broadcasters their bias is all too obvious. They cannot
hide the story that is embarrassing to one of their own, but they can
do their best to prevent similar stories in the future never seeing
the light of day.

Mr. Penn and his partner have left their flat after receiving
a large number of death threats as a result of this newspaper
coverage. Our right wing propaganda machines has achieved its goal.

2 comments:

With Trump and Johnson the permissive society rhetoric of Conservatism has fallen apart.

When I said here that Cameron's Big Society was merely Victorian Values renamed, it is looking now like a proper change to Conservatism, where shrinking the size of the state, that markets make morals, has overtaken the 1960's idea of the permissive society.

Comparing the Daily Mail online to the Daily Mail in print gives you the same change.

We don't need any more biased or empty plaudits for the incongruous Boris Johnson as he impersonates a circus bear that has been clouted too many times on its head. We need a Boris Johnson who is a ex-politician now sprawled at the bottom of a deep well of anonymity. Any MP who treats politics as an amateur charade belongs in a balloon juddering out of control in mid-Atlantic. Where the maddened and enraged media cannot reach him. If he became prime minister, wise leaders would never allow him inside the Elysee Palace or The White House. One tiny advantage; his political career is finite.

Unfortunately because of spam with embedded links (which then flag up warnings about the whole site on some browsers), I have to personally moderate all comments. As a result, your comment may not appear for some time. In addition, I cannot publish comments with links to websites because it takes too much time to check whether these sites are legitimate.